by Stella Hart
Black Hearts
Heartbreaker Book 3
Stella Hart
Copyright © 2018 by Stella Hart
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Alex
2. Celeste
3. Alex
4. Celeste
5. Alex
6. Celeste
7. Alex
8. Celeste
9. Celeste
10. Celeste
11. Celeste
12. Celeste
13. Celeste
14. Celeste
15. Celeste
16. Celeste
17. Celeste
18. Celeste
19. Alex
Epilogue
1
Alex
Pacing back and forth across the room, I kept a keen eye on the black and white clock that hung to the right, willing the hands to freeze, willing time itself to stop for just a while. Just for me. But they kept on ticking, the minutes crawling by, endlessly mocking me in their passage.
Twelve hours. That’s how long it had been since I lost Celeste.
Twelve long, agonizing hours, never knowing if she was okay, but knowing for sure she was in serious trouble.
I sat down on the end of the bed, putting my head in my hands. Black thoughts and heavy emotions were sprinting through my mind, fractured and confused, spiraling together in a grim dance. Out of control. Just like my fucking life.
I was usually steadfastly in control, but somewhere along the line, I’d lost every remnant of it, and every shred of self-respect had gone too. It was my own fault. All my fucking fault. Guilt hammered constantly at my brain, making my guts twist and my head throb.
I shouldn’t have gone to work yesterday, shouldn’t have left Celeste alone. I should’ve taken leave from the hospital the second I took her, so I could spend every moment watching over her and keeping her safe while we slowly worked on eliminating the Circle.
But I was arrogant, filled with hubris. I thought I could do it all—have her, have my job, and handle all my other shit at the same time. I thought setting up all the security measures around the relatively rural location would ensure it all went smoothly; ensure her safety even when I was miles and miles away.
It was nothing but a placebo effect, making me feel okay about it when in actual fact, it achieved fucking nothing, because by the time I heard the alarm bells going off, Celeste was already in trouble. I was thirty fucking miles off when those men broke in, and still fifteen miles off when she got in the car and left with them.
My fucking fault. I let her slip right through my fingers.
After going through all the possibilities, I had a good idea of who had her right now. There were three main prospects for who might’ve tracked her down and taken her with them—her friends, the cops, or the Circle.
I’d eliminated her friends right off the bat. From observing her all those years, I knew she preferred to keep female friends and didn’t hang around many guys, and the two people I’d seen on the security footage were assuredly men. On top of that, her friends wouldn’t have sent some sort of elite unit with four black cars to try and catch me once I arrived home, and there had definitely been that many cars swarming around my property last night, chasing me around the dark backroads until I managed to lose them. To add to that, even if her friends had tracked her down, they would’ve informed the police instead of trying to handle it themselves.
So that brought us to the second possibility—the cops or even the FBI. I figured this was the most likely option at first for three main reasons. One, the guys who took Celeste looked like cops. Even though the footage was grainy and I couldn’t make out their faces properly, just the way they were dressed and the way they behaved made them seem like law enforcement.
Two, it made sense that cops might’ve been looking for either Celeste or me. She was a missing person, and I also figured they might’ve finally found some evidence to tie me to all the Circle murders. Maybe I wasn’t careful enough when I dumped the last body; maybe I was too distracted by thoughts of Celeste. I might’ve accidentally left a print or been spotted by someone, even though I was sure I’d been just as vigilant and cautious as usual. If that was the case, and they suspected me, of course they’d raid my properties.
Thirdly, there was the men’s license plate. It was hard to make out in the footage, but if I paused it at just the right second, I could see part of it as they pulled out of the frame with Celeste in the back. It was a government plate, which likely meant police or FBI.
However, I’d eventually knocked that out as a possibility too. If law enforcement actually thought I was a suspect for anything major like the goddamned Heartbreaker murders, they’d already have me under arrest. They would’ve come to the hospital yesterday and pulled me right out of that damn surgery to read me my rights and restrain me, and in the situation that I wasn’t there, it would be all over the news that a manhunt was underway. My name and picture would be splashed everywhere—TV, radio, newspapers.
But it wasn’t. When I turned the radio on earlier to listen to the latest crime updates, all I’d heard was something about a home invasion in East Liberty and a double shooting in Homewood before the reporter moved on to the weather. There was no warning to the public about any sort of manhunt.
Also, when I called the hospital an hour ago to inform them I needed to take emergency leave due to some ‘family complications’, the HR woman I spoke to sounded mostly calm and relaxed, maybe a little tired given the early hour. Certainly not the demeanor of a woman who knew she was speaking to a dangerous wanted criminal. She told me that Zoe Leigh (the scrub nurse) had already gossiped to a few people that I ran out of the place last night citing some sort of family emergency, and so they’d been expecting me to cancel all my upcoming consults and surgeries anyway.
The hospital was my employer, so if I was in any trouble, the cops would’ve told them. Obviously, they hadn’t—as far as the hospital staff were aware, the only problem I currently had was my fictional family emergency.
On top of all that, I drove back out of the city after that phone call and parked about two miles away from my property. There was just enough light in the pale purple and gold dawn sky for me to fly a drone over my property and take some photos and video recordings of what was going on. As I predicted, there were men tearing the place apart to look for me or god knows what else, and they damn well weren’t cops. Their cars were unmarked, the men weren’t in any sort of uniform, and they didn’t seem to be following any sort of proper protocol.
I also checked out my other two investment properties—a condo downtown and a two-story place in Shadyside. It was the same deal there. Men swarming around searching, but no law enforcement presence or protocol to be seen.
That left only one option. The fucking Circle.
They had Celeste.
The thought made bile rise in my throat, with an accompanying feeling of dread and heaviness in my chest. If it’d been the cops who took her, then at least she’d have a chance at staying safe, provided she finally heeded all my past warnings and was careful to escape the clutches of those sick Circle bastards when they came for her. Even if I went to prison for the rest of my life once the cops caught up with me, she’d still have that chance, as small as it may be given the power and influence the Circle had. But that wasn�
�t the case. They had her, not the police, and if I didn’t locate her in time, she had no chance at all.
With a weary sigh, I looked around my motel room again. It was one of those seedy places with a faded paintjob and cheap furnishings where middle management guys with beer guts brought hookers to bang behind their wives’ backs. Or hookers themselves brought their johns, paying for crappy, dimly-lit rooms by the hour. I didn’t even want to know what might show up on the pillows, duvet, threadbare carpet and walls if I ran a black light over the room.
The parking lot was littered with trash and weeds growing through cracks in the asphalt, and I was willing to bet at least a grand that a building inspector had been bribed to not close the damn place down during their last review.
Despite all that, the place took cash without me needing to put down a credit card at the front desk, and right now, that was all that mattered. I needed a safe place to hide out; one which couldn’t be tracked. That meant cash only, no IDs of any kind presented to anyone else.
Even though the cops clearly didn’t have me on their radar, I still had to lie low, because the Circle obviously knew who I was now. If they tracked me, caught up with me, and killed me, I’d lose any chance of rescuing Celeste. And so I’d ditched my cell phone on the edge of a road somewhere and replaced it with a burner, affixed fake plates to the back of my car (I kept them in the back in case of an emergency situation just like this), and rented the motel room. My usual killing disguise was also in place—the dark blond wig and green contact lenses.
As I tried to think of my next move, my mind kept straying, and my heart thudded painfully in my chest, haunted by memories of Celeste and everything I knew her to be. She was so beautiful, so innocent and yet so wild. So strong. Even though she’d been dealt a rough card in her early life, she never stopped persevering, and when her bank account dwindled down to mere double digits some months, she still found it within her wide-open heart to give something to that little cat shelter she loved, all because she saw it as more important to help other innocent souls before she helped herself.
She was kind, generous, and wonderful. Nothing like me. There was no one else quite like her, and I couldn’t imagine a world without her spark, her glowing inner light. And yet, there existed people who wanted to erase her entire existence. She was nothing more than an inconvenience to them, a dark speck on their horizon that needed to be chased away forever.
I kept wondering what those fucking bastards were doing to her now that she was in their vile, wretched grip. It was driving me fucking insane. Her voice echoed in my mind constantly, screams of agony with pleading moans, begging for her shadowy aggressors to stop. As much as I tried to stop myself from hearing it, I couldn’t. It was always there; that icy fear of the horrifying things they might be doing to her.
They could be brutally raping her right now. They could be holding her down and carving shit into her like they did to the others. Or they might be tormenting her in other ways, inflicting as much pain and terror as possible, right up until the moment she lost her mind. The awful thoughts made me want to vomit.
Was she even conscious anymore? Alive?
I told myself she had to be, because the bastards liked to torture their victims for months, even years, but a disturbing little voice in the back of my head kept whispering dark things to me, telling me she wasn’t like their usual victims.
That was true. She wasn’t. She was a young woman who could ruin them, not a kid or teen they wanted to enslave, and so they probably wouldn’t do the usual shit to her. For all I knew, they’d put a bullet in her skull immediately and ditched her body in the backwoods somewhere.
I had to believe they hadn’t done that, though. I fucking had to. I couldn’t accept that she was gone; couldn’t stand the thought of those twisted assholes crowing over her dead body before tossing her out like a piece of garbage.
No, she had to be alive, so that I could make things right and rescue her from the sick fucking pricks before it was too late.
Panic and rage flooded me all over again, and I jumped to my feet, needing to figure out what to do right the fuck now. I hadn’t slept since my girl was taken from me, and I wasn’t going to until she was back safe in my arms. I couldn’t. I needed to see her beautiful face, hear her voice, touch her soft skin. Needed to chase away all her fears, kill all the monsters who threatened her world.
“I’m trying, Celeste. Fucking trying. Just stay strong for a little longer,” I said out loud, wishing against all reason and rationality that my words would float through the universe and find their way to her.
She had to know I was on her side. She had to know I was searching for her, and she had to have that hope burning deep within her. Surely. By now she had to have realized I’d never give up on her.
I took a deep breath and sat down again, attempting to straighten the jumble of thoughts in my head. The breathing helped my panic subside, but not my anger. That was still growing, churning like the dark storm clouds overhead, waiting for lighting to strike.
And finally, it struck. Time seemed to stop for a few seconds, just like I’d wished for earlier, as an idea crystallized in my mind.
I knew where to go. I knew who might have real answers for me.
With a grim set to my jaw, I grabbed my jacket and keys before storming outside to my car. Hold on, angel. I’m coming for you.
2
Celeste
I was awake.
My head was pounding and my legs and arms seemed to be paralyzed. My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton, and pain and nausea crashed through my system like a train from the depths of hell. For a few seconds, I couldn’t remember what happened, how I got here, or when I went to sleep. Or even how I went to sleep.
Then the fog subsided, and it all came back to me in a cold rush of horror. I tightened my trembling hands into fists and moaned softly through my nostrils at the chilling memories, wishing in vain for them to get out of my head.
With great effort, I finally peeled my dry, sticky eyes open and lifted my head. Such a small movement, and yet it caused an explosion of agony in my neck. No wonder—the left side of my neck was where Dwyer had jabbed me with a giant needle last night, after about an hour on the dark roads.
Wincing, I lifted my head some more, and panic flooded my veins as I realized exactly why I felt so weak and paralyzed. It wasn’t just from whatever drugs Dwyer gave me. I was lying on a hard gray surface, restrained with metal cuffs so small and tight that my circulation was at risk of being cut off.
My clothes were still on, except for my thick jacket and shoes, and I didn’t feel any aching down below that might suggest I’d been raped. A small mercy.
I parted my dry lips and panted, gulping down deep breaths as I twisted my sore neck and looked around, checking out my surroundings. I was in a small, dank room with dark gray walls and a concrete floor. No windows. A small, cracked yellow bulb to light the space. I couldn’t hear anything. No voices, music, traffic, chirping birds outside. Nothing.
Déjà vu crashed through me. This was all too familiar, waking up after being drugged and kidnapped, only to find myself trapped in a silent gray cell. Only this was ten times more terrifying, because my new cell was right in the belly of the beast.
I tried to pull my hands out of the cuffs, hoping they weren’t as strong as they looked, but they refused to budge despite my best efforts. I tried with my feet as well, but it was more of the same. I was stuck. I had no idea why I’d clung to any hope that I might not be; of course I was. These guys didn’t mess around.
A tear slipped down the side of my face as I lay my head back on the uncomfortable surface, resting my sore neck. My mind was whirling with regret, reminding me how stupid I’d been to not trust Alex.
A fist squeezed my heart at the mere thought of his name.
For so long, I thought he’d lied to me and betrayed me, but it turned out that I was the betrayer. I left, walked right out the door and away from a life wit
h him, and now I had no hope left at all. The Circle had me, and they were nothing like him. There would be no sympathy or compassion for me at their hands.
Even though Alex liked to inflict pain, it was never in an evil sense. He might whip or spank me, but it was only because he knew I liked it deep down. He wanted me to want the pain, and I did.
Despite my previous misgivings and distrust, I now knew—albeit too late—that there was never actually any threat of death there. The worst Alex would ever do to me was give me the sort of pain I craved and wanted anyway.
In regard to other people that weren’t me: he was a killer, yes, but he killed for a reason I could understand. The oldest reason in history. Retribution. The men he hunted, tortured, and maimed deserved it by virtue of their previous terrible actions against humankind. They were depraved, and they brought every ounce of agony upon themselves. If anything, they deserved more than what Alex did to them. More pain, more suffering, more crippling defeat.
They weren’t like him at all. There were no justifications for their actions, no ways to spin it and twist it. They were nothing but pure evil. They tortured, raped and killed innocents for pleasure.
And now I was their target, caged and waiting for whatever hellish torment they had in store for me.
I felt goosebumps cropping up beneath my clothes as a door opened, sending fresh dread ricocheting through me. Dwyer entered a moment later, pushing a loud stainless steel instrument trolley toward me with one hand, a gun in his other one.
“You’re finally awake. About fucking time,” he said, drawing closer. He grabbed a bottle of water from the trolley’s top tray and forced me to gulp some down.
